Thursday February 27, 2014 - Former Ukranian
President Viktor Yanukovych desperate attempt to
erase traces of corruption fails. Documents
found floating and beneath water being dried out
and already startling revelations on the depth
of corruption that was a badge of the ousted
man. Is this a wake-up call for Sierra Leone's
very own home-grown replica aka the rat that
when the time comes, there will be no hiding
place and that incriminating evidence are bound
to be found?
A part of the world's media
is now focused on
events in Ukraine where President Viktor Yanukovych has now been ousted from power by the
will of the people. It would seem that when
he got the whiff of what was to come, he and his
close aides desperately tried to get rid of
documents that implicated the former President
in a number of financial malfeasance. These
range
from hyper-inflated contracts and payments to
his chosen "contractors" to the lavish lifestyle
he maintained the walls of what can pass off as
the Ukraine equivalent of Sierra Leone's Lodge,
the official residence of the rat.
The international news outlet, Al Jazeera has
a feature article headlined -
Behind the
Decadence of a Ukranian President noting -
Perhaps the most damning aspect of
Yanukovich's estate was not his boat restaurant,
or collection of quail, or even his garage
filled with vintage cars, but rather the paper
trail of spending that Yanukovich left behind at
Mezhyhirya - including detailed financial
records.
Ukrainian journalists found reams of
documents floating on the banks of the Dniper
River near Mezhyhirya, along with other
documents, some partially burnt, around
Yanukovich's former estate. Some of the findings
appeared to show lavish spending and alleged
illegal activity: 1,695,744 euros ($2.3m) for
woodwork in the dining room and tea parlour,
$211,600 for thirty paintings purchased at a
MacDougall's art auction in London, and 2,700
euros ($3,700) believed to be allocated for
bribes in the local district near the estate.
Among the financial binders were papers filled
with the names and pictures of anti-Yanukovich
activists and journalists - ranging from the
feminist activist group FEMEN, to a reporter at
the Kyiv Post, an English-language
publication. Buried in the piles of paper, there
was also a flyer with the name and vehicle
license plate number of Tetiana Chornovol, a
journalist and long-time Yanukovich critic who
was dragged from her car and beaten up in
December.
The reference to the
treatment meted out to journalist Tetiana could
well be something rights groups in Sierra Leone
would be interested in when it comes to creating
hell on earth for journalists in Sierra Leone.
State House (read the rat) would often pretend,
without success, that he had no hand in the
action of the police even though it is a
well-known fact that the police are manipulated
by him with them using the "orders from above"
mantra to save their own skins.
The New York Times headlined its own take
thus - "A Prize Catch for Ukranians at a boat
harbour - an ousted President's secrets" and has
this as part of the story -
The papers were first spotted
swirling in the eddies of a boat harbor on the
sprawling compound of the former Ukrainian
president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, on the
outskirts of Kiev. Intrigued, the
protesters-turned-security guards who had taken
over the grounds found a raft and began fishing
the documents out of the water. Later, they
recruited a diver to retrieve sunken nylon bags
of files from the riverbed.
What they found were the waterlogged secrets of
a government that nobody was ever supposed to
lay eyes on, dumped by the president and his
associates in the panicked last hours of his
tenure, before he fled in a helicopter to
eastern Ukraine.
The documents, which are still being dried out,
along with others from the lavish home of the
prosecutor general, are being posted on the
Internet in Cyrillic for all to see. Together,
they provide an increasingly detailed portrait
of the final desperate weeks, days and hours of
members of a besieged inner circle trying
desperately to maintain their grip on a
government they had plundered to an extent that
shocked even corruption-weary Ukrainians.
They reveal details both mundane and alarming,
showing in one instance how the private zoo,
golf course and other luxuries on the
president’s estate were paid for, and detailing
in another plans — never carried out — to
mobilize the army to clear protesters from the
capital...From the
river emerged the soggy titles to two Mercedes
cars in the name of the woman suspected of being
the mistress of the president, Lyubov Polezhay,
a sister of the presidential cook.
“What they didn’t manage to burn they threw
in the water,” said Serhi Scherbyna, the
editor of The Insider, an online
investigative journalism website, who said
he found irrefutable proof linking the coal
trading enterprise that won about $1.5
billion in government contracts last year to
the company that managed the presidential
estate, its private golf course and zoo.
“I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “I’ve
lost so much of my health trying to prove
this connection. As a journalist, I felt
satisfied. I could finally prove the
theories I had put forward. As a man, I felt
I had been lied to. I was holding in my hand
proof. It was the feeling of a scientist who
has proven his theory with evidence.”
By Tuesday, journalists had photographed all
of the approximately 20,000 soggy pages and
posted them on a WikiLeaks-like website,
Yanukovychleaks.org.
Elsewhere, the paper trail left by fleeing
officials pointed to a role for a Russian
military adviser, a former deputy head of
the G.R.U. military intelligence service, in
the plan to secure the government district
of the capital and to clear Independence
Square of the protesters who had built
formidable barricades there during a
three-month occupation. The security forces
had two plans, called Operation Boomerang
and Operation Wave, according to the papers,
released to local news media by a member of
Parliament.
International broadcaster the BBC had this
heading on its website - "Ukraine: Secret
documents dried off in Yanukovych's sauna" with a
video clip showing documents recovered from the
water as well as those that were meant for the
fire but which survived.
Documents that were disposed of in a
reservoir, when ousted President Viktor Yanukovych left Ukraine, have been found and are
now being dried in his sauna.
Divers recovered thousands of pages which
contain details of Mr Yanukovych's finances
and are now being scanned and analysed.
Local investigative reporter Oleg Khomenok
told the BBC's Steve Rosenberg that
''exaggerated or extremely high expenses''
had already come to light.
The UK-based Guardian
newspaper provided these details
on its pages -
Thousands of documents
were thrown into the
reservoir by the compound,
but they were in plastic
folders so many floated to
the surface. Some of the
files were easily skimmed
from the top of the water,
while others were retrieved
from the bottom of the lake
by a team of specialist
divers, who arrived at
Mezhyhirya late on Saturday
night to begin their
underwater explorations.
They also found boxes of
live ammunition, apparently
tossed away in the
last-minute dash to leave
the compound. In one of the many
buildings on the estate,
Ukrainian investigative
journalists are sorting
through the stacks of files,
in an atmosphere of extreme
secrecy. Outside, Igor, a
member of the protest
movement's car patrol unit,
Automaidan, guarded the
door, an automatic pistol in
his inside jacket pocket.
"We have to be very careful
who we let in, this is a
very sensitive situation,"
he said.
The decor inside the
building is overstated
kitsch, deep red and cream
carpets complemented by
gold-plated wallpaper. But
the hub of activity is
downstairs, where papers and
files cover most of the
floor space. Here
Ukraine's top
investigative journalists
have been working in a team,
day and night. "People are
just grabbing five minutes
sleep whenever they can,"
said Natalia Sedletska of
Radio Liberty, one of the
group. "There's a sauna room
in here, so people hang out
in there to warm up." A team of specialists who
have expertise in
restoration and archives are
giving their services to the
team to help them try to
preserve as much of the
vital information as
possible. Some of the files
were partially burned before
being tossed in the water,
showing the panic that
accompanied the president's
flight.
CCTV footage from the
estate released at the
weekend shows trucks being
loaded with boxes before
Yanukovych jumps into a
helicopter and flees his
palatial compound for good.
It seems that the security
staff felt they did not have
enough time to burn all the
documents, and eventually
just chucked them in the
water. It is clear that a
lot of sensitive documents
were indeed destroyed, but a
first look at what has been
retrieved suggests a whole
range of scandals could be
uncovered.
"These documents are the
biggest proof we have of
Yanukovych and his regime's
corruption," said Sedletska.
"There is evidence not only
of the dispossessed
president's extravagant and
luxurious lifestyle here,
but also of the culture of
bribery, corruption and
nepotism."
She alleges there is a
large body of documents
relating to the massive
Mezhyhirya estate and the
mysterious firm Tantalit
that owned it, and record
purchases of the opulent
fittings in its mansions,
such as a $2m sauna complex,
and stone cladding costing
hundreds of thousands of
dollars. "There are also
receipts for millions of
dollars in cash payments.
Bribes – what else?"
Sedletska said. One document
supposedly shows billions of
dollars flowing into
Tantalit in 2007 and 2008.
These events and
findings should be another warning bell to the
rat that despite all his attempts to hide behind
a finger, the documentary evidence will be there
when he is eventually brought before a tribunal
to face charges relating to economic and serious
crimes he has committed against the people.
He will have to tell
Sierra Leoneans and the world of his unexplained
wealth that has seen him using raw foreign
currency to bride political opponents and to
keep ruling party dissidents in line.
The former Ukranian
President is now a fugitive from justice wanted
for the murder of those protesters who had been
demanding his removal from office.
Would-be prosecutors in
Sierra Leone should be dusting their files and
brain cells as they get ready for the trial of
the rat over the murder of protester Musu Conteh,
the whereabouts of that six year old girl that
was touted as a bride in a satanic ceremony at
State House, the murder of perceived opponents
of the ruling party with perpetrators allowed to
carry out further acts of impunity and a host of
others.
One question that would
need to be answered - where was the rat when he
was billed to give a keynote speech at a meeting
organised by a financial newspaper in the United
Kingdom? |
